Famines, pregnancy and effect on the adults

Maternal malnutrition is deleterious for the health of offspring throughout their life. The pathological process is thought to involve foetal programming and includes adult manifestations of the metabolic syndrome. Although the mechanism for programming is not proven, it is thought to involve epigenetic change, possibly including imprinting. Effects of maternal starvation are thought to affect multiple generations. The thrifty genotype hypothesis, more recently supplanted by the Barker hypothesis, or foetal programming, or thrifty phenotype hypothesis, might still contribute to the process. Proof or disproof of this will be possible when databases for the whole genome sequence of single tissues or even single cells can be compared within tissues of interest of populations exposed to maternal starvation and controls.